by Mark Lawson
‘Glarse?’ she asked gutturally, sounding as if she were cursing them.
‘What? Oh, er, no, no thanks.’
Ned paid, aware, as he picked the coins from the pocket change pooled in his palm, that, for the first time in years, he was registering how much things cost. There was a set of empty tables in the furthest corner of the room. As they walked towards them, Tom inspected the wet plastic bottle.
‘English River Water. I’d be happier knowing which one. What if it’s the Thames?’
As they sat down, Ned noticed that builders were looking over at them and laughing, but he remained calm. Being seen with Tom was an imperfect test of conspicuousness. Even before Ned’s TV career, people had tended to stare at them because of the huge disparity in their heights. In their early days as lecturers, they had been known as Little & Large, until the tag lapsed, first because younger staff were unfamiliar with the comedy act and then due to the modern terror of drawing attention to a colleague’s appearance in any way.
Because of the length of Ned’s legs, it was more comfortable, at small tables such as this, for them to sit diagonally rather than opposite each other. Each took a swig of the geographically unspecified freshwater.
‘Hwæt?’ said Tom. Since a newspaper debate over whether this Anglo-Saxon exclamation was the root of the contemporary ‘So’, Tom often adopted it to open conversations. ‘Who goes first?’
Happy to postpone his own revelation – still unsure of the words he would use – Ned said: ‘Well, it was you who asked to meet.’
‘Yep. Okay.’
Cancer, divorce, a pregnant or suicidal student, Ned thought, during a pause in which Tom reached into an inside pocket of the linen jacket he had placed on the back of the chair. Ned, in his new default condition of paranoia, stupidly feared for a moment that he was going to be shot or stabbed, until Tom took out two folded sheets of foolscap and shunted them across the table top – plastic but stained to look like wood – where they snagged on some dripped fridge-sweat from Ned’s drink.
Opening and straightening the document, Ned expected the first page to be headed by the crest of a hospital or law firm, but it was a smudgy print-out of an e-mail. He recognized the college web-address, although not the name of the sender. At the end of the introductory paragraph, Ned said, ‘Christ!’, and then, following the list of allegations, ‘God!’ and, after Wellington’s sign-off, ‘Fuck!’
‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘That adaptable little expression pretty much covers it. We’re the opposite of Eskimos and snow. One word for the thing we most want and the things we most don’t.’
‘Did you know all this was going on?’
‘Well, I told you at the party that Special had asked to see me …’
‘Fuck, er, yes.’
‘And you remember the Traill hearings? You gave evidence?’
Unsure how much he had told Tom at the time, Ned thought before saying: ‘Oh, yeah. But I was in and out in ten minutes. My line was that Special was an unimaginative bag-carrier who had got himself over-promoted by being willing to carry out whatever new madness the management spouted. I threw in a couple of the most famous anecdotes about Daggers and Savlon. Who, I’m assuming, are among your anonymous accusers?’
‘Well, I suppose so. And Horny. And probably Rafferty. I’d be amazed if I haven’t sighed during those endless meetings and presentations of hers and, if I apparently stifled a sigh on one occasion, then they ought, in my opinion, to be congratulating me for holding it in, rather than trying to sack me. But the rest of it. It’s like getting your passport back with someone else’s photo in it. I just don’t know this potty-mouthed bigot who has apparently been taking my classes. Until now, I thought “What did I say?” was something you said when someone you were talking to went a bit moody. But now I actually sit there for hours, going back over everything I might possibly have said, ever, like Krapp with his tapes. Some of it is just bonkers. I mean, I am absolutely one hundred and ten per cent, as the tennis players say, certain that I have never made offensive comments on sensitive topics, including disability, religion, and sexuality or, indeed used sexually explicit and offensive language in teaching situations. In a way, it’s reassuring because it means that it isn’t, like, they’ve got Watergate tapes or anything. This is just nutters venting and, indeed, inventing.’
‘Yes, it’s pretty vague stuff. This feels like a fishing trip, a witch hunt.’ Ned caught himself sounding like a lawyer and recognized that this must be what happens to the accused, forcibly schooled in prosecution and defence. He tapped his finger down the list of alleged offences. ‘So. There are … eight charges.’
‘Yes, though over twenty-two years. So, statistically, I have long spells of pleasantness. The student ones, I’m assuming, are darlings who’d grown up being told they were Einstein and then found themselves staring at a ballet skirt …’
Even though used to simultaneously translating Tom, Ned was thrown: ‘At a … ? Oh, a 2:2. When they say the charges include, do you think they’re using the term properly or loosely?’
‘Properly, I’m gambling, and not just as a notorious pedant. Later on, there’s an including but not restricted to. Hwæt …’
Ned re-scanned the e-mail. ‘Favouritism? I never really think of that as one of the proper sins like sexism or racism. I mean, not liking someone because they’re thick or tricky has to be different from not liking them because they’re black or female.’
Tom frowned. ‘You’d hope. But these times are mighty strange. And Savlon is thick, tricky and female, so she may have played the gender card. At least none of my enemies is black.’ Ned glanced across at the nearest non-white diners to check eavesdropping distance. ‘Although I suppose that might be seen as discriminatory!’
Ned was fighting an uncomfortable feeling of pleasure that someone else was in trouble as well.
‘Have they seized your hard drive?’ he asked.
‘Lines unlikely to be spoken in the nineteenth century. No, of course, they haven’t. You make me sound like a children’s television presenter.’
Ned was taking offence until he remembered that his friend didn’t know.
‘Nod, I want to ask a favour. If you say no, you’ll burn in hell for ever but it won’t affect our friendship.’
A reference? You won’t want one when I’ve had my turn in the confessional.
‘This sort of boxing second I can take along to the stages,’ Tom said. ‘With a bottle of water and a spare pair of pants, presumably. I’d like to take you.’
‘Look, Tom, there’s something I should tell you first.’ They were sweating from the stored heat of the sunny day and the blast from the ovens. Their water bottles had long been empty. ‘Shall we graduate to the harder stuff?’
‘No. Really. I can’t …’
‘Trust me.’
Slightly resenting Tom for not standing this round – but they had abandoned Dutch rules when Ned’s television career made him the richer of the pair – he bought two more frosted bottles. Coca-Cola was running a summer promotion in which the drinks had a name stamped on the side. Ned’s Diet Coke was personalized to Debbie, Tom’s to Pete. Ned imagined the new religion of significance that must already have been constructed around someone being served a bottle with their own name on it, or the one that was soppily stamped Love.
‘Do you think it’s a globally customized promotion?’ Tom asked. ‘Are there Austrians riffling through the chiller cabinet for the Adolf and Eva ones?’
From his new instinct, Ned checked the room for lederhosen or dirndl skirts. He took a sip from his bottle of Debbie, the fizz tickling his throat into a cough. ‘So what pills have they got you on?’
‘Diazepam, 5mg.’
‘Snap. Well, almost, I’m on 10.’
‘Get him! Competitive even in anti-anxiety treatments. And another one – 50mg, beat that! – of Sert, Sert something …’
‘Sertraline?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’
s two-nil, Tom. Dr Rafi’s got me on 100 mils of that.’
‘Bugger. So you must be twice as fucked-up as I am? Better tell me why, Nod.’
So much of his time now, Ned realized, would be spent trying to delay saying what had happened. In his head, he rehearsed a euphemistic introduction, then staged it. ‘You’ll doubtless be familiar with the work of Operations Yewtree and Millpond?’
‘Christ! You were fucked by Jimmy Savile? I always knew the swots would pay a price for writing to Jim’ll Fix It.’
‘It’s not a joke, Tom!’ His voice came out louder than he had intended and most of the customers turned in their direction.
‘Steady, Nod. They’ll think they’re witnessing one of Britain’s first gay divorces.’
‘That’s what I mean.’ Though his speech was quieter, Ned felt a sob building, almost unstoppably. ‘Not everything’s a feed for a punch-line, Tom.’ As close to a whisper as he could go. ‘Two days ago – the morning after the party – I was arrested and charged with a …’ – scarcely more than mouthing now – ‘a sexual offence.’
‘Denmark!’
Over the years, in Tom’s personal patois, ‘No way!’ had become ‘Norway!’ and then, progressively, other Scandinavian nations.
‘Fin bloody Land!’ Tom emphasized his shock, then moved a hand across the table to find Ned’s, which he squeezed. Though his generation’s instinctive resistance to potential effeminacy told him to pull away, Ned held on and returned the pressure, moved nearly to weeping by the gesture.
From one of the Balkan foursomes rose a roar that developed into wolf whistles.
‘Well, whatever’s happened to us,’ said Tom, ‘it would be worse being a queer in Slovenia.’
Ned breathed out theatrically. ‘Do you ever think the trouble – your trouble – might come from the sort of stuff you say?’
‘You tink I haven’t taught that?’ Spoken, for some reason, in a parody Al Capone accent. ‘And that’s what Hells will say when I tell her.’ Back to Chicago gangsterese. ‘But I never meant nottin by it, Boss.’
‘Helen doesn’t know yet?’
‘No.’
‘Wow. Hasn’t she noticed … Oh, Christ, you’re not one of those guys who still pretends to go to work, spinning out cups of tea in a cafe near the station all day …’
‘No, no. I’ve told her I’m rush-writing an article to steroid my REF score. Less distraction at the old homestead.’
‘Why haven’t you told her the truth?’
‘Because it’s like … what is it like? Telling your mother you’ve shat yourself? Telling your wife you’ve shat yourself. Telling your wife you’ve got chlamydia and she’ll have to be tested. Telling your mother you’ve got chlamydia and she’ll have to be tested. But worse than all of the above. You’ve told Emma?’
‘Of course.’
‘And how was that?’
‘Your comparisons are pretty spot on. Except that, look, suppose you have to tell your partner that you’ve lost all the savings on a one-legged donkey at Uttoxeter – at least horse betting wasn’t something you did together. But when you’re accused of … something like this … it’s like infidelity but with … with …’
‘Knobs on!’
‘Oh, Thomas, please.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You haven’t said what sort of sexual offence? Demonstrate with the salt and sugar cellars if it helps.’
‘I’m pleased you find this all so amusing.’
‘Nod, Nod, there’s nothing remotely funny about what you’re going through. But I don’t take the charges seriously. If I’m making light of it, it’s because I don’t think for one moment that you did it.’
Ned blinked away the sudden blurring of his vision. Emma had to believe in his innocence – or to say that she did – but his friend’s confidence – because optional – was more touching.
‘So what are you supposed to have done?’ Tom asked, with a tenderness that Ned had only experienced from him during the divorce. ‘Talking? Touching? Or … more.’
‘More.’ He mentally translated the allegation into words that he felt able to speak. ‘Sex. Sex that started as consensual but then became not so. According to her.’
Tom’s face twisted in pain but Ned imagined him feeling the comparative consolation of a below-knee amputee who meets someone who has lost both legs.
‘Historic, as the illiterates say?’
‘Virtually prehistoric.’
‘What? You shagged a pterodactyl?’
‘Tom.’
‘Sorry. What date?’
‘1976.’
‘Ya have the name of the dame?’
‘They sort of tell you not to tell anyone.’ A do-me-a-favour face from Tom. ‘Okay. Chatham House rules. Billy Hessendon.’
‘Silly Billy! But I never thought she was more for you than someone walking across a desert looking for … I won’t finish that metaphor.’
‘Nor did I. In the cell, before they told me, when I was doing a version of Leporello’s list, I’m not sure I even included her. You remember the ’70s! Although obviously I won’t be saying that in court.’
‘This isn’t going anywhere near a court.’
‘You promise? I missed your appointment to head the CPS.’
‘Nod, I know it won’t be any consolation but you’re standing in a big tent and it’s crowded. The word in the fields is that Tinky Winky is worried about a knock on the Teletubbies’ burrow. The weird thing is that I’ve looked at guys at conferences – the Juan Dons, you’ll know the ones I mean – and thought: you must lie awake worrying about the knock on the door at dawn?’ Ned flinched at his memory of the detectives’ arrival. ‘Some student you screwed in the ’70s, who got a Crookback in their finals and now sees the chance to make a point and a few grand. Especially since Prof Allison. But we’ve kept our Y-fronts clean on that one and now they’ve come for us with this other stuff. It’s just what’s in the water. Some countries have typhoid; we have moral fever. What does the Uni-perversity say?’
‘I haven’t told them yet. What about you?’
‘Full-pay suspension.’
‘Then I guess I’ll get the same.’
‘But it – the thing – didn’t even happen on campus?’
‘I don’t think that matters much these days. Claire – my solicitor – says that, with historic victims now, it’s guilty until proven innocent.’
‘Yeah, I think I’ve come across that somewhere. What about t’ Telly?’
‘I’ve got to see Ogg tomorrow.’
‘And, from what we know of old Odd, he’ll do whatever brings him most money …’
‘Yeah. Or least trouble. And I think I know which way he’ll go on this.’
Tom laughed. ‘At least, the job we’re in, this doesn’t come as a surprise. History repeats itself, the second time as faeces. It’s like the days of Savlon-arola!’
‘Savlon-arola!’
Ned raised his Diet Coke in a toast and, in that moment, was struck by the twinge of intellectual conception that he had never expected to feel again. Aware that one of the symptoms of his depression was forgetfulness, he made a mental note as literally as he could, seeing a pen writing the key word on the squashy grey cauliflower of his brain.
‘So that,’ he told Tom, ‘is why you won’t want me to hold your coat during the Inquisition. And that’s fine. I fully understand.’
‘Bollocks, Nod. You’re the even more perfect choice now. The buddy they give you at AA is another drunk, not a life-time abstainer. Do you think I’m guilty?’
Ned tried not to hesitate. ‘No.’
‘And I don’t think you are.’
Overwhelmed by this declaration, Ned was worried that he would blub.
‘Okay. If you’re sure. But if you change your mind … is there anything else we can do?’
‘I’ve thought of getting people to write. The thing is, I actually broke up a – Christ, I can barely say this word now – bullying thing at Teddy’s
by going to the beaks. But I don’t suppose Gore-Balls – he was the housemaster – is with us any longer …’
‘He wasn’t really called Gore-Balls, was he?’
‘Of course he fucking wasn’t. Even at Teddy’s. He was called McTavish, which became Gorbals, which became …’
Tom shuffled his jacket from the back of the chair and hugged the fabric around him, even though at least two of the builders now had bare shoulders, the tunic of their overalls lowered and tied like a cummerbund.
‘Thermostat buggered?’ Ned asked. ‘I’ve had that.’
‘Yeah. From summer to winter in a minute. It’s weird. The quack says it’s all quite normal, although presumably using the word loosely. Some of his stuff, though … apparently counting sheep – counting anything, in fact – for insomnia is a no-no. Apparently it’s too stimulating. Who knew? He suggested visualizing every room in your childhood home one by one …’
‘Really? Well, fine if you grew up in a house with a hundred and eighty-four rooms like you …’
‘Yeah yeah. Pass me the laughing gas. It does work, though. I’m usually flat out by the back dining room.’
‘Okay. I’ll try it with our Kentish hovel. Might have to go round twice.’
Tom, presumably warmer now, ended his self-embrace and lifted his empty bottle. ‘Should we go on drinking these until we get our own names or a Billy or Daggers?’
‘I’d better go. If I’m even slightly late, Emma worries I’m under a train.’
‘Ah, yes. Did the quack ask you if you’ve had suicidal thoughts?’
‘Yep.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘No.’
‘And have you had them?’
‘Yes. What about you?’
‘Triple ditto. I think you’d have to have Asperger’s not to. Nod, I think we should make a pact.’
‘Steady on, Tom. I didn’t say I was actually …’
‘No, you quarter-wit. A non-suicide pact. If you ever think you’re going to, you tell me. And Vicky Verka.’
